Hands On with the World’s First 34” Ultra Widescreen Display: The LG 34UM95

We managed to get hands on with one of the most impressive displays you will ever see. LG claim that their 21:9 Ultra widescreen 34UM95 display is the world’s first 34 inch Ultra Wide QHD screen, and who are we to argue. Equipped with two Thunderbolt ports, the 34UM95 is designed for creative professionals and offers advanced color management, incredible split screen functions and dual link up for attaching two PCs or Macs simultaneously. Watch Nicole Scott get hands on:

The idea of having a much wider panel for an Ultra Widescreen experience is largely possible because of advances in LCD display manufacturing, and it’s absolutely fantastic for today’s creative professionals who want lots of pixel space when editing high resolution videos and images. It’s interesting to see that manufacturing bottle necks have long influenced displays and how we use them, going as far back as early cinema and the humble cathode ray TV.

Movies have long been shot and filmed in a 16:9, this is because the original movie projectors and screens in cinemas were designed to work best with viewers who had two eyes, with a wider 16:9 ratio was considered ideal. Human physiology naturally favors a wide screen it would seem, but traditional TVs however were designed to present content in a 4:3 ratio, which is the squarer shaped screens we were all used to until about 15-20 years ago when the first LCD and plasma screens started to arrive. The reason we had 4:3 TVs and therefore 4:3 content, was due to the physical limitations of the actual glass cathode ray tubes used to manufacture the TVs.

The move back to 16:9 ratio screens and content only happened because of advances in plasma, LCD and LED panel manufacturing. It’s great to see further advances in panel manufacturing today, not just on the small screens of our mobile devices (which can now reach Full HD on sub-5″ displays) but also with large professional workstation displays like this beautiful LG 34UM95.